An Australian father who works upwards of 60 hours a week across multiple jobs has opened up on how the cost of living crisis is hurting his family, and the difficult conversations it is forcing.<\/p>\n
A recent report from human resources software company Employment Hero showed there has been an uptick of poly-employment \u2013 whereby people have to work multiple job to make ends meet \u2013 in recent years to curb cost of living pressures.<\/p>\n
The report showed that one in three Australian workers had more than one job to balance their personal and financial demands.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, those that do hold one job are looking for more hours to manage cost of living pressures.<\/p>\n
Bevan Jones, an Adelaide-based father to a three-year-old daughter, has taken on multiple jobs to maintain a comfortable living standard for himself and his family.<\/p>\n
He works full time in a radio sales position while he moonlights as an MC, radio announcer, podcast host and a freelance journalist for local newspapers.<\/p>\n
Mr Jones says he works upwards of 60 hours a week during the busiest time of year.<\/p>\n
He estimates that he works about 35 hours a week doing his radio sales job and does a few hours a week as a radio announcer.<\/p>\n
Work as a freelance writer for local papers was more intense during winter when sports reporting was more in demand, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFreelance writing is a bit spontaneous,\u201d Mr Jones told SkyNews.com.au.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was writing for three newspapers actually during the footy season and that’s down to two now. I was doing like footy reports, match reports and that sort of thing as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo now I’m just doing like some freelance writing for a couple of country newspapers about sort of farming stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
Work as an MC had also dried up after winter, as Mr Jones was previously in front of a microphone every weekend – and some weeknights.<\/p>\n
On top of this, all the work that goes into his podcast, such as organising guests, social media management and recording, adds extra working hours to his week.<\/p>\n
Mr Jones and his wife, who works about three days a week, purchased a home just before the pandemic when interest rates were near 0 per cent.<\/p>\n
He had noticed that making mortgage repayments throughout a time when the cash rate grew from 0.1 per cent to 4.35 per cent had \u201cgradually got harder and harder\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe interest rates keep going up all the time and so do your household bills which is extraordinary when you think that (as) we’re going through the challenges that we are, everything keeps on going up,\u201d Mr Jones said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn’t make it easy and I can see why so many people are struggling out there and needing to have more than one job to be able to earn a living and live comfortably so you can still go on holidays and that sort of thing as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked whether financial strains had led to having second thoughts about other children, Mr Jones said there had been discussions about it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’ve actually had a conversation a few times with my wife,” he said.<\/p>\n
“She’s desperate to have another one and I sort of said to her, \u2018How are we going to be able to survive?\u2019 and she’s like, \u2018Oh, we’ll make it work, I’ve got savings\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think she’s just very happy to be able to have another one. So, if it happens, it happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the fiscal challenges he faces, Mr Jones said the love of his work made it worth it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI enjoy what I do and, whilst you have some challenges and \u2026 I’m very busy, I like actually doing stuff that I actually enjoy rather than sort of being stuck at a desk and doing something you hate,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s just nothing worse than that.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Australian father who works upwards of 60 hours a week across multiple jobs has opened up on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,133511,99,2610,164,90407,32893,5465,21131,94462,7054,183],"class_list":["post-218663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bevan-jones","tag-business","tag-cost-of-living","tag-economy","tag-employment-hero","tag-father","tag-inflation","tag-mortgage","tag-multiple-jobs","tag-rba","tag-reserve-bank-of-australia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}